Arick Huebris

The Baron of LOWTOWN

Hall Of Fame!

Survival - 8 Wins!

AFFILIATION

Alignment: Hero

Team: Reavers

VITAL STATS

Strength: Weak

Agility: Superior

Mind: Standard

Body: Standard

RECORD

Personal Wins: 8

Personal Losses: 3

ThePoet

[Alternate Khazan: Mindsplatter] Arick Huebris, that's my name, or at least that's what it says on my office door and what people used to call me in the former world. Now they call me the Mortician and you're better off not knowing why. Suffice it to say that I can track down the cause of anyone's death, natural, unnatural, supernatural and any other way it can be described. It's a gift or a curse, usually a curse, but it pays the bills so I don't complain too much. Back in the old days, before the Mindsplatter, I was the chief mortician for the Khazan police department. I still had the ability back then, but it comes clearer, sharper now with more focus each passing day. But with the Mindsplatter, any semblance of a police force is gone, so I had to go freelance. Zoot Suit Riot throws work my way occasionally, usually when he's under a deadline from Zalrafel and can't make it without help. Darned weak and pathetic, but still pretty amusing for me. The mighty Fallen general, and he needs the lowly Mortician to help out so that he doesn't get fired. I don't mind at all because I need the money, but I usually charge him double if he's in a bind. However, they don't always pay me and when they do, it's never what we agreed on. If I thought there was anything I could do about it, I'd have done it already. My services don't come cheap. After all, a man's got to make a living. I do get the occasional run of the mill client. You know, the distraught relative of someone who was murdered. The kind of person who throws enough money at you that you would be stupid not to at least fake it and try to help them out. Those clients are few and far between these days and I got bills to pay to people who don't seem to take no for an answer. The Elephant's back casino and the Lowtown Chauffeur both charge hefty rates and they are darn strict about collecting. The last person who refused the Chauffeur wound up field-testing his new cluster rockets. And that's why Evelyn Gray's case was music to my ears. There's no better way out of debt for me that a client with deep pockets. With this job I could pay off my debts, buy a nicer office in a better location, get a trench coat that is actually white, and maybe even off the black list at the Elephant's back. But nothing this good ever comes my way. For this amount of money, knowing my luck, there has to be a catch and a rather steep one at that. Not to say I wouldn't take the job, I'd just have to be extra careful and paranoid when I went about it. Finding the killer of a librarian is one this, but this particular librarian worked right under the Fallen throne. Killing a Fallen, especially that close to Zalrafel, was a death wish for anyone. The whole idea made me queasy, but Evelyn Gray's pocketbook took care of that in a hurry. I'd just have to be more careful than usual. Especially under the Throne because if you're not careful there, you wind up being one of them and that is worse to me than dying.

I like to think that all I care about is money. It just makes the world a lot easier to sort out and there is no real emotional attachment. Despite my intentions, I know that I care more about the world than just my own pocketbook. I like to think of myself as a just and fair guy, but that only seems to turn up when I have a personal stake in the matter. If someone was getting beaten up in the alley, I just walk on by. Either they deserved the beating or were too dumb not to carry protection, which makes them worthy of one unto itself. No one ever dared mug me in a back alley. To complicate matters, no one ever knew exactly why. Legends and rumors of my talents had spread through the Lowtown Crash, into the Throne District and beyond. I wouldn't be surprised if Marc Dollar, the transcended one himself had heard of me. However, those rumors were enough for groups of armed thugs to goose step around me and for no one else to have an office in my building. The peace and quiet is kind of nice, but all those thoughts in my head and nothing to interrupt them is bound to have some adverse effect.

In Conflict

     Mental Defense: Supreme

  • Reinforced Defenses

 

My own personal moral dilemma. Well, maybe not a moral dilemma, but it keeps my mind occupied day and night, even my dreams aren't original anymore. Just a swirling of past cases, present cases, debts, microcosms, and personal acquaintances. Pisses me off something awful, but it does keep everything else out of my mind and that is a good thing in this world. Most Mindsplatter cases were simple. The thing hit you and you were either killed or turned depending on your mental state at the time. But for a lucky few like myself, the Mindsplatter did something better and worse at the same time. The good part is that it spared me. Not by choice, and not entirely by accident either. The bad part was that it pushed me to the brink and in a few senses past the brink of insanity. I hate this feeling, knowing you're almost crazy, knowing why, and not being able to do a blessed thing about it. I do pity the poor soul who got hit that split second after me, because I wouldn't wish this head ache on my worst enemy. Well, maybe my worst enemy, but I still can't figure out who that is. There are so many to choose from, choosing would be like shooting fish in a barrel. But in this case, the other fish would be jealous instead of relieved. After all, being a known enemy of the infamous and increasingly popular Mortician is bound to earn you some allies.

 

The Gift, Part 1

     Bio Vampire: Supreme

  • Ranged Attack Only

 

Here's the nasty part, and I do mean really nasty. This is the kind of nasty that when you see something that makes you squeamish, I amplify it a million fold. Imps become devils, frights become terrors, and spooks become horrors. My line of work is already enough to make people uneasy, but my talents take them to the horrors of their own supernatural thoughts. I can boil this talent down to energy redirection, but most people cringe, vomit, faint, or in the case of Zoot Suit, grin somberly with mild amusement when I use it. All I have to do is touch the corpse and I get a surge of energy. All of the life forces within the body and its aura I absorb. The downside is that the body shrivels up and decays exponentially faster than it would have alone.That fuels my gift, my sense of direction, my awareness of truth concerning the subject. Truth, the most fickle word in the world if you ask me. It's true that Zalrafel and his ilk run this world, but I'm not sure this world itself is true. Part of me thinks this is a bad dream, but it's too real the way everything here sinks into your senses, your blood, your being. Especially when I use the gift; the essence pulsates, resonates, clouds my mind and makes it clearer at the same time. Sensation all too real in a world being drained of life by the second. My gift, the only thing that keeps my desire to live intact.

 

The Gift, Part 2

     Detective: Supreme

 

Sure the act gives me a sensation, leaving me a fraction of a degree better than a drug addict. I do this because I seek the truth. Because someone is paying me to. Because I get bored and got bills to pay. The traces of life I absorb distill my senses like giving a bloodhound a raccoon's scent. It shows me where they've been, let's me trace their footsteps leading up to their death. I can even see the act of them being killed. I can see who did it, with what, where, when, and how they did it. I answer those five questions and it makes the rest a heck of a lot easier to solve. Then there's the eternally hard question of why. Never do get a straight answer out of anyone for that question. Why am I here, why do I have this gifted curse, why does my blood reach a fevered boil every time I go work for the Fallen? Bad omens, call it instinct, insanity, or whatever you will, but the more I think about the why, the more eerie I get.

 

Know it

     Environmental Awareness: Superior

 

The alley behind my office has two dumpsters, one green, one black. Last I checked 47 empty milk crates were leaned up against the black one and 42 against the green. A trickle of water, sometimes mixed with blood, urine, and God knows what else crept through the cracks in the street. Everything about that alley, I know. Not because I live there and walk through it every day, but because I make a point to know it, just like I make a point to know everything I can about where I am. I know where the security cameras are in the throne district and I know how to avoid them. Anything you want to know I can probably tell you, for a price. Fat lot of good it will do if you don't apply it. Knowing how hot an oven is won't save you from burning yourself, it'll just make you think twice before going near it. Information and action are two different thing. It's better to take my advice now, or else you'll learn this stuff the hard, tough, and possibly even deadly way.

 

Immunity: Bio Vampire

     Immunity: Standard

 

About a year ago, we had a zombie scare. Well, the Fallen had a zombie scare, I had a huge payday. Some blowhard was apparently raising zombies in one of the graveyards on the far side of the Lowtown Crash. At first they were no trouble, so they were ignored. Then they began to get in the way and meddle with Zalrafel's plans, so naturally they had to be stopped. Luckily for me, Zoot Suit was swamped with other jobs at the time so he asked, or told, me to take care of it. Personally I think he was just wussing out of a squeamish job, but money is money and I didn't care. So I went to the cemetery and sure enough, there was some crazy, wild-eyed, and very insidious sorcerer just raising bodies and having them dance, jump, and do anything else for his amusement. I asked "Baron Zombie" politely to stop. I don't know if that was his real name or title, but something told me that we were past the formalities of introductions and whatnot. I thought I asked politely, but apparently it wasn't polite enough because he whirled, looked at me with a cruel glint in his eye, and sent all the available zombies to tear me apart. Big mistake on his part, but then again, how could he have known? The zombies fell as soon as they reached me. However, there were a few too many of them. Before they had all fallen, the energy had built up to the point that something inside of me, my own capacity for life, was stretching, tearing, undoing. I had to expel it, make it disappear, and quickly. I concentrated on all the corpses I had just consumed. I knew everything about them. It seared out from my body more painful than anything I had ever experienced. He saw something, maybe it was a glow or an aura, but that wizard was terrified and fled like a fox hunted by hounds. I collapsed, surrounded by corpses and gravestones, unable, not wanting to remember anything for a time.

 

In the Air Tonight

     Danger Sense: Superior

 

Fairy tales teach us about things that go bump in the night. Bogeymen, monsters under the bed, skeletons in the closet; they are all fair game here. And all the conventional stuff happens too: bombs, tornadoes, blizzards, hurricanes, etc... The rule for reality is this: If someone can think it up, it can and most likely will happen. The only thing you can do is be prepared, exect the unexpected and most importantly, react quickly. Duck soon enough so that the bullets don't hit you, jump far enough so the grenade doesn't kill you, take precautions. Body armor, spells, guns, bombs, traps, anything you can get to survive is worth it. It takes of lot of energy to skirt danger at every turn, especially danger of this magnitude, but I'd rather be alive than dead, I think. So far I am, although I'm beginning to question the meaning of life, especially in this universe. Well, I was already questioning it. Now it's on more of a continual basis. Every waking minute I question. I don't sleep anymore, don't know where I am or who I am. Scares the crap out of me, but it's comforting too. No horrible past to dredge up, no second thought to anything I do. But I still have so many darned questions. No answers yet, but I have more and more questions each day. Life? Death? Reality? Light? Darkness? Pain? Joy? Time? Eternity?

 

Back Alleys

     Blending: Superior

 

The Mindsplatter leaves nothing to the imagination except for a few enlightened or cursed minds depending on how you look at it. Anything and anyone you see may be real, fake, or somewhere in between. Take Rock Sugar Baby for instance, I talk to the man almost everyday, but I'm still not convinced he's real. The trouble is, I'm not convinced he's fake either. Another walking paradox like me, nice knowing I'm not the only one. ~Walking through this world in broad daylight, or the equivalent being enough neon noir to make your head spin is scary enough without worrying about who's following you, looking for you, or generally trying to make your life unpleasant. That's why back alleys, trench coats, and drab colors are important. Anything to draw attention away from yourself is a good idea unless you absolutely want someone to find you and trust me, you don't. I've had clients who found me that I wish hadn't, and those were people who didn't even try to kill me. The people who tried to kill me wound up dead because I hate looking over my shoulder constantly. I hate it, but I still do it. Some days I just wish I was a pathetic no name who scrounged through dumpsters searching for daily bread. Then I remember, I'm the damn Mortician, most people try to avoid me. Doesn't make my life any easier, but it's nice knowing that I have that kind of influence.